An interview on Gaming Nexus talks with American McGee of Spicy Horse about Akaneiro: Demon Hunters, their action/RPG that's currently in open beta testing and the subject of a currentKickstarter Campaign. They focus on the Kickstart, discussing the attention it's bringing to the project in addition to funding, the reasons for a fundraiser for a completed game, and thoughts on the future of crowdsourcing.

Cutter wrote on Jan 15, 2013, 13:52:Not one penny for this. Hope it fails miserably.

They're almost half way to their goal with plenty of time remaining. It looks like this will get funded, despite being an apparent cash grab.

That being said, the game is currently in open beta so I might give it a try. I like the way American does thematic riffs off of fairy tales, even though most of his games have failed in the execution.

My biggest concern was that we present a high quality offering that would rise above the noise. We studied other campaigns that worked well and tried to emulate their best features. It’s a beauty pageant, but there’s also a huge amount of live interaction that must be maintained throughout. What I’m realizing now is that a campaign is only as effective as you drive it to be – it requires constant attention and feeding.

Yep. A campaign void of information or updates usually doesn't catch on very well, though some still do if the nostalgia factor is high enough.

I'm more clear now on what he's actually asking money for (it seemed weird that he wanted money for a complete game,) it's to add extra features beforehand rather than later through patches, which seems reasonable enough. I'm not really sure why he thought that "Oh yeah, we just dev salaries, and then added a chunk for marketing" statement was going to do him any favors though...

Anyway, I have no interest in this game, so no interest in the KS either. And they really should implement some form of shadows in their game. Everything seems to be floating in their screenshots.